


Movin' to the Country

by TheAmethystRiddle



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/F, Mentions of Cancer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-21
Updated: 2014-12-21
Packaged: 2018-03-02 13:51:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2814287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheAmethystRiddle/pseuds/TheAmethystRiddle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bad news falls like rotten fruit. A shadow looms over the hero's homeward gaze. In the summer, the tree hung low with ripened peaches.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Movin' to the Country

“You ever had a peach?” Shepard says, taking the cigarette from Jack’s lips and sitting beside her. She is buried in a beaten-up leather jacket, her voice muffled by the collar of the hoodie underneath, pulled up to her nose. It’s not even that cold out, Jack thinks, watching Shepard shiver. She emerges, briefly, to take a drag on the cigarette and then blow the smoke into Jack’s face with a smirk.

“What the fuck is a peach?” Jack says as she takes the butt back and tosses it on the ground to grind it out with a foot. When she glances up Shepard looks scandalized.

“What’s a- it’s a fruit, Jack. Do you know what fruit is? Do you even eat food or do you just suck shit all day?”

Jack laughs. Shepard always knows just what to say.

“Yeah, I’ve fucking heard of fruit. There’s ice cream flavors named after it. Strawberry and chocolate and shit.”

Shepard stares at her in disbelief.

“Chocolate’s not a fucking fruit, Jack. Jesus.”

“Yeah, and vanilla’s not a type of vodka. What’s your point?” Jack bares her teeth in something like a smile. Shepard swats at her, catching her in the jaw, and Jack swats back. There’s a hint of biotic power in her blow, and Shepard nearly falls off the bench.

“You’re fucking with me. Here I was, ready to offer you an Earth-grown delicacy, and you’re being rude to me.”

“What, you got a peach on you?” Jack asks, eyeing her up. “Isn’t that, like, summer shit?”

“Two minutes ago you didn’t even fucking know what a peach was!” Shepard shouts. An older couple walking by turns to stare at them, and in tandem the two of them fake unconvincing smiles and wave.

“Of course I know what a peach is,” Jack says when the couple has moved on. “Everybody always wants to go home and eat peaches on the family farm or whatever. It’s a metaphor for eating their girl out, so what?”

“Well, they’ve got peaches on Earth again. See, the Reapers wiped all that out, but they got peaches from a colony and now they’re growing them on Earth again. First crop is next year. Real Earth peaches. You know they taste different depending on where they’re grown.”

“So, what, you got a family farm back on Earth? You gonna go home and eat your girl out? What’s your hard-on for peaches, Shepard?” She won’t admit that it’s kind of cute, the way Shepard’s face lights up when she talks about some stupid fruit.

“I don’t have a girl, don’t get all possessive. I just fucking like peaches, okay? I used to eat them when I was growing up. There was a big old tree in the middle of the mall that nobody was supposed to touch. But you don’t give a shit about ‘supposed to’ when you’re starving and the only food you can see is that big fucking tree with its branches practically bending with fruit. Learned to run fast like that.”

Shepard leans back against the bench and rests her arms on the top wooden slat, her gaze focused on something far away. She seems to have forgotten about the cold, her breath steaming in front of her. Her fingers twitch next to Jack’s shoulder, and when Jack gets up the courage to lean against her hand she turns her head and, lightning fast, presses the freezing tips against Jack’s neck with a laugh. Jack yelps and jumps away, but just as quickly Shepard’s fingers close around her wrist, pulling her back. Their shoulders knock together and then Shepard leans against her, suddenly serious again. She stays like that, her eyes on the rising stars, until Jack breaks the silence.

“You hungry a lot as a kid?” It comes out quiet. This is a part of Shepard she doubts many people know much about. They’d all done their research, of course, Jack included, but there wasn’t much to be found. Jack realizes with a sinking feeling that she’d never really thought about why.

“Oh, yeah.” Shepard’s tone is candid enough, but there is something strained in her voice. “Nobody feeds the beggar kids. There were a lot of summer days peaches were all I got. Winter we’d eat fucking pine needles off the Christmas trees.” Jack huffs a laugh and Shepard’s eyes flick toward her. “You think I’m joking.”

“What about fall and spring?” Jack asks with a lopsided grin, but the joke falls flat. Shepard smirks anyway.

“Who knows. I don’t remember now. Hot dog buns out of the trash cans. Sometimes the guys at the Chinese food stall would give us the chicken they had to throw out at the end of the day. Everybody knew we lived there, but no one wanted to talk about it. Anyway, we waited all year for those peaches. We lived for that shit. Only found out later the tree was laced with eezo.”

“Fuck.” The word is a shocked, pained breath.

“Yeah. They were trying to- grow us or something. ‘Testing the effects of post-natal element zero exposure on potential biotic subjects.’ That’s what the report said, I think.” She turns her head to leer at Jack. “Guess it didn’t quite take with me.”

“’Quite’?” Something about the word unnerves her.

Shepard looks away again and lets out a huff that could be a laugh or could just as easily be a barely restrained sob.

“I’ve got cancer or some shit.”

Stunned silence. Jack feels as though she is submerged in it, and then her rage drags her to the icy surface.

“Fuck! What the fuck? Why didn’t you tell us?” Us, Jack realizes, being everyone they both somehow stumbled into caring about. The squad. The crew. She feels the need to jump to her feet, to thrash around, to throw something as though it will rid her of the twisted, painful knot in her stomach. Instead she leans more heavily into Shepard’s shoulder.

“I didn’t know. They found it after they- picked my pieces out of the rubble on the Citadel. Said it’d been there for years, that I should’ve been dead ages ago. Said there’s no way I should’ve stayed in service with a tumor like that, but that maybe staying in the service is what kept me alive. Alliance must have known but kept it quiet because my name was too big. Cerberus must have found it and just not given a shit as long as I lived long enough to do their dirty work. Seems like everybody knew but me.”

“Fucking shit. Lawson knew,” Jack hisses, her eyes narrowing with rage.

“Yeah. And Chakwas knew, and Anderson probably knew, and you bet your ass that slimebag Udina knew. It’s not just Miranda that fucked my mouth on this one. They all did.”

Jack does the breathing thing the justicar taught her for a minute. This isn’t about her being pissed with cheerleader. This is about Shepard, and Shepard’s life falling apart around her as she learns everyone she thought cared about her was lying to her. Thinking about it like that just makes Jack even madder.

“Fuck them,” she says finally, letting out her eight-count breath in a rush. Her head is half-wild with rage and a fear she doesn’t understand so she just rolls with it as her fingers wrap themselves around Shepard’s fingers and squeeze tight. Shepard’s breath hitches and Jack realizes with a wave of panic that she is crying as she pulls her hands – and Jack’s hand, too, which she almost seems to have forgotten she is holding – up to her face.

“I haven’t told anybody,” she says, a sob catching in her throat. “I don’t- I don’t know how.”

Jack pulls Shepard to her chest, cradling her head and shushing her quietly as she rocks gently back and forth. In all honesty she has no idea what she’s doing, just as she’d had no idea how to comfort her war-stricken students in the prefab shelters back on the support lines, but she does now what she did then; holds Shepard, murmurs nonsense for white noise – half a Thessian nursery rhyme, the terms and conditions for an Elkoss Combine Scimitar ownership license, the King James translation of Psalm 23. It’s outdated and probably incorrect; she doesn’t remember where she learned it. _Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. I will fear no evil._

She hardly notices the old couple wandering by again, looking concerned. She’s too busy trying to gauge whether kissing Shepard will help or hurt, but when Shepard pulls back and looks up at her, her face a mess of snot and tears, it seems only natural to Jack to press their mouths together. She knows she’s made the right decision when Shepard immediately clutches at her face to pull her closer.

Honestly, it’s gross. Jack soon has a mouthful of snot and salt and Shepard continues to cry, each sob a shaky breath across Jack’s lips. It’s not- hot, or cute, or whatever she’d thought their first kiss might be because if she’s honest with herself she’s thought about it and something like this never even crossed her mind. This is desperate, not in a good way, and tastes like fear. She wonders if it could have been anyone, if she’s just a pair of lips and it doesn’t matter that she’s her, that she’s Jack. But then Shepard leans her forehead against Jack’s jaw and breathes her name, just barely, like she doesn’t even realize she’s saying it, and Jack knows. Knows in an embarrassing gut way that this is right somehow, that Shepard came to her first because only she could do this. It feels good.

“We’re gonna go get peaches next year, right?” she says. They both pretend there isn’t a tremor in her voice.

“Yeah. You gonna eat your girl out back at the family farm?” Shepard asks, a small snort the best laugh she can manage.

“Hell yeah. Find me a pile of hay and I’ll make her scream.” Jack presses a kiss to her temple, surprisingly tender. Shepard snorts again. “We should get back inside somewhere. It’s cold as shit out.”

“At least I’m dressed for the weather,” Shepard complains as Jack drags her back toward the town lights. “Your pants are more hole than they are fabric. Aren’t you worried your ass will get frostbite?”

“Nah. I have this secret, see.” The night wraps around them, cool and dark, the stars brilliant above the colony settlement. Nothing’s okay. Shepard still sniffles back tears. But right now Jack knows, at least, that she can take a moment to pretend for both of them. Later is soon enough to suffer again. Later she will hold Shepard and she will do this right because somehow she knows she can; she can do this right and they will get by and in the summer they will eat peaches.

“What’s your secret?” Shepard asks, her face half a grin and half a wince. She knows something embarrassing is coming.

“I’m just so damn hot!” Jack yells, and then she takes off over the hill, Shepard close behind.

**Author's Note:**

> honestly i want to try to write at least one more chapter, maybe two, but right now i am rip me and i want to play dragon age. peace


End file.
